Indie game festival IndieCade announced today that it has partnered with Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) and David Alpert's Skybound Partners. Under the new partnership the companies will explore producing an online web series about the IndieCade Festival and participating game makers, creating a dedicated video channel for IndieCade nominees and award winners and furthering the efforts in publishing opportunities.

Team Outer Wilds' "celestial exploration game" Outer Wilds received top honors this evening at the 17th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards last night at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The game took home the biggest prize of the evening - the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game (and a $30,000 cash prize), as well as the Excellence in Design award.

Positech founder Cliff Harris has been known to be outspoken on issues that are important to him (DRM, for example) over the years and has taken it upon himself to speak out on issues when he felt the need, so word of what he said during a GDC talk this week is not all that surprising. During The Indie Soapbox panel Harris had some strong language for middleware makers and how - in some ways - the accessibility of game engine software that is cheap or free has been a detriment to the indie game development scene.

With the death of Majesco's Midnight City label, a publishing arm that was dedicated to bringing slick independently developed games to market, one of the biggest game deals that label had secured has fallen through. Midnight City signed on to publish the console versions -including a Wii U version - of Fullbright's first-person adventure game Gone Home, but late last year the company laid off staff and effectively shut the label down.

Gamasutra has an interesting and fascinating article on how one developer harnessed the power of a captive audience to test a prototype of his mobile game. Waiting in line at your local Department of Motor Vehicles office is a pain in the ass. Chances are you'll be fiddling around with your phone anyway so when the developer of the mobile puzzle game Patchmania needed some help testing his latest creation it made perfect sense to him to ask people to try it out.

Sega's mobile arm Sega Networks announced today that it has acquired independent developer Demiurge Studios. Sega says that this purchase is part of series of investments in the "Western market." Sega Network also announced that it has taken a major stake in San Francisco start-up Ignited Artists and London-based Space Ape Games.

PlayTech announced this week that it plans to acquire Yoyo Games Limited, the company best known for developing the popular cross-platform game development tool suite GameMaker Studio.

GameMaker is popular with novice and indie developers. It has been used to develop such notable games as Hotline Miami, Risk of Rain, Gunpoint, Gods Will Be Watching, Nidhogg, and Spelunky. In its announcement PlayTech claimed that the game development tool has over 750,000 registered game developers.

Submissions for the first annual MomoCon Indie Game Awards are now open, organizers announced today. Indie game developers are invited to submit their completed titles or works-in-progress to the awards. Developers of games selected as finalists will receive free exhibition space at MomoCon 2015 from May 28 - 31, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

Organizers of the Game Developers Conference released new details on what games and developers would be part of this year's Indie MEGABOOTH Showcase exhibit. The exhibit, which is open to all GDC passholders, will be open at various points during the week of the 2015 Game Developers Conference, March 2-6 (Moscone Center, San Francisco).

The Indie MEGABOOTH Showcase highlights a collection of games from independent developers who have banded together to show off the latest and greatest indie games at conventions across the world in one large and sprawling space.

GungHo Online Entertainment America announced a partnership with indie developer YummyYummyTummy to host a second Indie Games Live party at PAX East on March 6. The event will be held at Guilt Boston (800 W. Olympic Blvd. in Boston) from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m and is open to the public (i.e. PAX East attendance is not required). The 2015 Indie Games Live East Coast will feature video game industry professionals, top media and industry influencers, and talented indie developers and passionate games fans.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) today announced the continuation of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) College Game Competition, which provides colleges and universities with video game development programs an opportunity to showcase their game at E3 on an annual basis. Each institution can submit one game, with selected finalists receiving a display space at this year's E3 event in Los Angeles this summer.

Back in September, we ran a story noting that Zoe Quinn, developer of Depression Quest and victim of a horrifying amount of disgusting harassment, would kick off the following month's Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo (SIEGE) with a keynote address on "Translating Everyday Systems into New Gameplay Mechanics."

Finalists for the 17th annual Independent Games Festival awards have been announced today. For the 2015 event, which runs in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference in March (Moscone Center, San Francisco), organizers chose 30 indie games in a variety of categories including Excellence In Visual Art, Excellence In Narrative, Excellence In Design, Excellence In Audio, the Nuovo Award, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Cryptic Comet founder Vic Davis says that he will abandon digital game development in favor of returning to creating traditional board games. Cryptic Comet is best known for creating the hit strategy games Solium Infernum, Occult Chronicles, and Armageddon Empires. Why is Davis leaving the game development space to return to his roots? He says that selling digital games has become "an increasingly difficult task" lately.

When GSC Gameworld went insolvent and had to close its doors many years ago, a large contingent of its former employees left to form a studio called Vostok Games. You may have seen the name before because representatives from the company have been pretty vocal about people who claim to have worked on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series in various capacities - specifically West Games, who unsuccessfully tried to crowd-fund (and failed) a spiritual successor called Areal. That company is currently trying to crowd-fund another game called Stalker Apocalypse.

Independent game festival IndieCade, and Museum of the Moving Image announced that they will partner for a third year to present IndieCade East from February 13 - 15, 2015 at Museum of the Moving Image. The Festival program includes a professional conference featuring panels and discussions headlined by prominent game makers, academics, artists, marketers, and journalists.

While a lot of publications are doing the year end awards, we find the stuff the community is making infinitely more interesting. So in that spirit, we want to highlight that the community has voted for Mod DB's Players' Choice Top 100 Mods of 2014. The public voting took 10-days and saw 66,061 people pick their favorite creations.

These mods included Euro Truck 2 Multiplayer, Breaking Point for ARMA III, Enderal for Skyrim and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Lost Alpha mod.

Lucas Pope's hit indie title will be making its way to the iPad tomorrow, according to a tweet sent out by Pope today.

Papers, Please was released on Mac and PC in August of last year and was well received by both critics and fans alike. In the game you play a border agent in an Eastern Bloc country who is in charge of approving or denying entry into your country.

Pope confirmed the release in a tweet with a picture of the game running on the iPad along with the date "December 12."

Microsoft has issued an apology to members of its Xbox Live Indie Games development community who have not been paid in the most recent round of payouts. The apology came after a member of the Destructoid community posted a rather scathing blog post about the situation, which was then shared across social media.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and LittleBigPlanet 3 developer Sumo Digital has completed a management buyout, acquiring itself from parent company Foundation 9 Entertainment today. The UK-based studio was acquired by mega development studio Foundation 9 back in 2007, and has collaborated on big-name titles and built its own games since then.

The studio was able to buy itself back from Foundation 9 thanks mostly to cash from private equity firm NorthEdge Capital.

As part of its Nintendo Direct event yesterday, Nintendo announced 24 indie titles coming to Wii U and 3DS, including Gone Home, Thomas Was Alone, A World of Keflings, The Swapper and Proun+.

Other notable titles coming to Nintendo platforms include the popular Stealth Inc 2 and Shovel Knight. Some of these games are (obviously) not exclusive to Nintendo's platforms and already available elsewhere.

The Media Indie Exchange is giving independent developers a special place at the GDC Next conference in Los Angeles next month that will allow them to showcase their games to other industry professionals and members of the press.

Earlier this week, indie game Paranautical Activity was mislabeled as an Early Access title when it launched on Steam. This upset one of the game's developers who issued a few profanity-laden tweets culminating in:

On Saturday, November 1 from 1-4 pm, I Am 8Bit and Double Fine Productions will team up once again to present 'Day of the Devs,' a special event that showcases the best games from a variety of indie game studios.

EMP Museum passed along word today that it will celebrate the opening of its newest exhibit with the "Indie Game Revolution Launch Party" on November 7, 2014. EMP has partnered with UK-based indie video game collective the Wild Rumpus to curate a gaming party that’s part indie arcade, a "sound and visual extravaganza."

All are welcomed to attend. New and unreleased games from Wild Rumpus will be at the event, along with titles to be premiered in Indie Game Revolution, sponsored by Nintendo.

Last night organizers of IndieCade 2014 handed out awards honoring such indie studios as Double Fine, Little Wins, and Down to the Wire. There were more than 1,000 submissions from developers, and over 30 nominations for the awards this year. IndieCade is an annual event held in Los Angeles that celebrates independent developers and the wonderful games that they make.

Hack 'n' Slash from Double Fine took the Grand Jury Award, while Loveshack's Framed won the Visual Design Award, and N++ from Metanet Software was given the Special Recognition Awards.

This week's Humble Weekly Bundle is all about IndieCade the annual festival of independent games happening now in Los Angeles. The Humble Weekly Bundle IndieCade 2 offers the games LYNE, A Slow Year and Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love for whatever you want to pay. Meet or exceed the average price to score Proteus and a double pack of ibb & obb for you and a friend.

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Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am